10/21/2009

Since almost one third of the visitors on my blog are non-swedes, I realized that I had to start an English version of my blog. When I translated the heading, "Fredman on the Mill Hill", I remembered "The Fool on the Hill", a song by The Beatles, written and sung by Paul McCartney and recorded in 1967, included on the Magical Mystery Tour album. I like this song very much, with its melancholic melody, and the subtle lyrics. McCartney said of the song: "
'Fool on the Hill' was mine and I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn't taken too seriously. I was sitting at the piano at my father's house in Liverpool hitting a D 6th chord, and I made up 'Fool on the Hill.'" Maharishi was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced the Transcendental Meditation, and became well known in the West partly due to his interactions with The Beatles. He died last year.

Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer,
But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.
Well on the way,
Head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hear him,
or the sound he appears to make,
and he never seems to notice,
But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.
And nobody seems to like him,
they can tell what he wants to do,
and he never shows his feelings,
But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.
Ooh, ooh,
Round and round and round.
And he never listens to them,
He knows that they're the fools
They don't like him,
The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.
Ooh,
Round and round and round